Since her first one-woman show Sexy Hysteria in 2015, Zhang Zipiao’s art has changed tremendously during the past two years. Once characterized by the exceptional speed of her brushwork, her painting has transfigured into something poised between abstract and figurative, seemingly intended for the misreading of the viewers. When her frantic brushwork disappeared in solid bright colors, a significant new phase of Zhang’s art has arrived. And it is to be represented by twenty paintings and a neon installation, Anti-Social Social Club, in the artist’s second solo show.
The title of the upcoming exhibition, Shallow Paintings 101, plays with the prevailing titles of the beginners’ guides, giving a hint to Zhang’s artistic pursuit, which is to follow the instinct for what’s straightforward, simple and basic.
About Artist
Zhang Zipiao (b. 1993) was born and raised in Beijing. Her father is a devoted artist, “a workaholic who seems to work 24 hours a day and is rarely seen being attracted to other things.” That might be the reason why Zhang Zipiao has adopted a totally different life style as an artist. The utopian selfless devotion to art is never her passion. A little girl as she was, she was “mature” enough to realize that to be single-minded in art actually blinds an artist.
When she graduated from a local high school and made up her mind to go to America, she was first admitted to Maryland Institute College of Art. But she was disappointed by the education there, and started worrying about her safety due to the devastating crime rate around the campus. She then decided to go to the best art school in the United States of America, and a year later, she managed her transfer to the Art Institute of Chicago. Here in Chicago, the “ruthless” praise from her teachers helped in building up her confidence as an artist. The school museum charmed her with a huge number of masterpieces of the Western world, got her dumbfounded, yet over time, bored her with the so-called mainstream possibilities. Finishing her study in Chicago, she found “being fully integrated” a false proposition for immigrants, for integration is always an on-going process. She came back to Beijing in 2015 and started her career as an artist. Now she lives in Beijing and New York – “I’m fine with the inevitable ‘isolation’, and have no problem while communicating with the rest of the world as a Chinese.”
Zhang Zipiao describes her way of life as “working hard, playing hard.” When you see her, you see her playing, roaming, lingering, staring at her smart phone all the time, either on Wechat, Instagram, Facebook or Youtube. More often than not, she would be inspired by the viral contents online, maybe a picture or a viewpoint. When she starts working, however, you’ll never see her around. To Zhang, the creation of art has always been personal, something she has to do in the studio all alone in order to stay focused. “I talked little about my work with friends. I don’t live like an artist when I’m not working.” Zhang has given such confessions more than once that he does not want to be “an artist in agony”. Although “agony” is considered somehow as a virtue, it will neither do good to her art nor her life in Zhang’s eye. With this principle, she cut art off from the rest of her life decisively, whereby art became sheer work, out of which She’d like to get the best, but has nothing to do with her life. “I don’t agree with those who live to be an artist, drowning in their love for art with relish. That sounds suffocating to me.” For sure, it conflicts with the banal attitude a “good” artist should have, but it’s not going to stop with such an iconoclast. In her recent works, she’s been challenging the beauty of art itself– now that trying to be enigmatic is believed to be the path to it, why not indulge herself in being shallow?
